1. Field
This invention relates to multimedia data. In particular, the invention relates to distributing multimedia data.
2. General Background
Techniques to deliver multimedia data to the viewing audience are widely used by interactive multimedia services. A technique for transferring data such that it can be processed as a steady and continuously stream is called streaming. Streaming technology is becoming increasingly important with the growth of the Internet, because most of the viewing audience (e.g., users) do not have fast enough access to download large multimedia files quickly. In addition to limited bandwidth to transfer a complete file prior to viewing (which might take too long), streaming media players are intended for viewing-only, i.e., after viewing content, it is not stored on the user's computer.
The streaming technology is used by both residential and commercial sectors. Services available to the residential sector include video-on-demand for movies, news, sports, television programs, home shopping, interactive games, surrogate travel, and a wide variety of educational and information services, to name a few. Services available to the commercial sector include video mail, conference records, multimedia manuals, training, and industry specific uses such as video footage of homes for sale used in the real estate industry and video footage of vacation resorts in the travel industry.
There is an increasing demand from the viewing audience to receive quality data packets embedded in multimedia streams. Currently, an internet protocol (IP) provides a means for data packets to be routed across underlying networks. The IP does this by providing both a destination address and a source address as part of the data packet sent on the network. With the current IP addressing and networking, it is not possible to fully determine where the viewing audience is with respect to the to the edge sites (servers) due to the facts that the IP address may be reassigned without regard to geographic or political boundaries. When the IP address is reassigned, the edge site that serves the viewing audience the multimedia streams may not be the best edge site to distribute the data because it may not be close in proximity with the viewer or viewing system. Also, when the IP address associating with an edge server is reassigned, user may be directed to an edge site that is not the closest regional internet to the user. This is likely to result in reduced quality because the data stream has to pass through IP exchanges and a busy network link between the regional internets.
Therefore, there is a need to have a technique that provides quality delivery of multimedia streams to the viewing audience.